There were several highlights at Saturday’s Kyalami Motorsport Festival, but perhaps the most memorable was how Charl Arangies came, saw and conquered with his all-new Stradale Motorsport Aston Martin Vantage GT3. Arangies’ new car arrived in South Africa last month and the Vereeniging driver was immediately impressed by its speed in testing, but not even he was expecting what was about to unfold.

Arangies’ stunning metallic green machine not only ran like clockwork throughout the Kyalami weekend, but Charl was quick out of the box, ending up second in his first, exploratory practice, before he went to the top of the time sheets in the second session and remained there for the rest of the weekend. “I was quickly able to find a fast pace we topped the times from the second practice session and we kept it there in practice 3,” Arangies explained.

“From there we put it on pole position and then it was just a matter of driving it to a lights to flag win each time, but best of all was to break the Kyalami overall lap record on lap 5 of the first race. “The Stradale Aston Martin is now the quickest ever car around the new Kyalami in race conditions in a time of 1 minute 44.680 seconds and I think that’s a major feather in our cap!

“I need to thanks Aston Martin Racing in the UK as they loaned me a dash so we could actually race after ours blew in testing at Phakisa and of course, I must also thank my Stradale Motorsport team for all the efforts over the weekend. “To be honest the Aston Martin was the least of our worries and it delivered a brilliant result, but it’s still a team effort and I was delighted to win for the lads!”